


begin again and again

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Conversations, Emotional Baggage, First Kiss, First Time, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Recovery, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-17 17:18:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13081569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: In running away from everything that he thought he knew, Prompto fetches up on the doorstep of a coffee shop: and he wasn’t looking for someone to understand him, wasn’t looking for someone to reach out to him, but that’s exactly who’s waiting for him, with a demitasse of strong coffee and a hard-won patience of his own.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stoven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stoven/gifts).



> Written for the FFXV Secret Santa 2017, organized by @peonysoda and @stlmpaks 
> 
> For recipient @hal3arks

It’s not much, now that he’s here, now that he’s irrevocably and completely well shot of everything that he used to call home.

Forget moving to a different city: he’s moved halfway across the world, to a place he always said he’d go, to a place he always promised himself he’d see, and the tropical heat and choking humidity of home is a part of his past, completely left behind.

And if he wants to remember exactly where he is, why then all he has to do is look out his third-floor window to see a lonely beach fenced off for the winter months, the golden-brown sands undisturbed by the footprints and the imprints of bodies taking in the sun.

The sea glitters for him, beneath the wan winter sunlight -- what little of it there is, anyway, since the afternoon skies present him with nothing but a thin scrim of gray-slate clouds.

A city known for hothouses full of blue roses, and several festivals related to books, and a hundred-foot-tall hill on which a beautiful ramshackle ruin of an ancient fort is located: and he’s promised himself that he’ll wander the streets of this city, the new quarters and the old alike, the shadows of the steel and glass behemoths and the brick and stone stores, the tram that runs through the rainbow district and a series of blocks that might as well be a living archive of all the world’s religious beliefs with the density of convents and monasteries and places of worship.

All of this, all of this city, waiting for him to wander through and find something new and something to remember, every day, and he even has his camera, patient and enduring and always and only his, already on the bed, unboxed, quietly charging.

But he also wants to fall straight into the mattress on its low-slung box frame, damn the fact that he still needs to buy things like sheets and blankets, because home is so far away now, and this place is not yet his home, and he still needs to cry.

He hates that he still needs to cry: just now, just in this moment when he’s shivering from jet lag and hunger and a vicious migraine.

At least he’d only had to bring in one small rolling suitcase: all the luggage he’d carted across the world. The books and the clothes are still in storage one block over, and he’ll be able to hire some help in getting them here, so he doesn’t have to worry about that quite yet. 

What he does worry about is this: he’s almost thirty and he can fit two-thirds of his life into one single piece of rolling luggage.

And most of it is taken up by something that should have been -- a trifle, housing trifles. Specifically, a metal box that used to hold doughnuts, that he’d cleaned and scrubbed and left to dry, so he could use it to store postcards and photographs and the stubs of concert tickets. Faded receipts from famous restaurants. A handful of old boarding passes -- he won’t be going on any business trips soon. 

He puts that on the mattress next to the camera, next to the curled-in kinks of various charging cables, next to the silent flat shape of his smartphone, and he looks at the sea, again, so he doesn’t have to feel the tears coming down.

“Start over,” he says, between sobs. “Start over. I’m good at it. I can do this. I can start over.”

Prompto Argentum takes a deep breath, and falls to his knees, and he cries himself to sleep -- half on the mattress and half off it, in his travel-worn shirt and tatter-hemmed jeans and blocky heavy boots, and the sea winds whisper like distant mourning in his ears.


	2. Chapter 2

The tantalizing smell of something baking -- of something sugar-glazed -- wakes him up, and -- 

“What,” he says, and he blinks at his smartphone. It’s already set to the right timezone, and he’d already programmed several reminders and to-do notes into it, and it is still telling him that somehow or other he’s slept for thirteen hours, and it is almost morning once again.

He’s not sure he believes in small blessings, but he has no choice but to take this one, and -- he jumps into the shower and spends a minute with his hands over his mouth because of course he fumbles the shower controls and gets the cold water first and he shakes even after the hot water has started pounding into his skin, sluicing the ice and the shock of coming awake away. He washes his hair twice. The comforting smell of hay fields fills the bathroom, and at least he can order more of this soap easily, so he doesn’t have to worry about running out.

Clothes to wear today, his first full day on the ground, his first day here in this new home: and already he can feel the plunging temperatures, already he needs to bundle up, so he pulls on an undershirt and a thick pair of socks. Black t-shirt with studs around the neckline, and a green button-down, and his sturdiest pair of jeans, and his other pair of boots: new, these, and still in the process of getting broken in.

He debates bringing his squashy hat, stripes in green and dark gray, and settles for sticking it and his camera into a small sling bag.

Quick once-over of his pockets, before he steps out of the apartment: keys and wallet and little coin purse. Bright red bandanna that matches nothing he’s wearing, and a neon-blue puffy vest that he doesn’t zip up.

And he tries to whistle, clattering downstairs, but he’s too cold and all he can produce is a series of toneless puffs, and he laughs at himself and almost feels good about it, as he tries to find the source of those wonderful baking smells.

He only has to go across the street to find it: wood-and-glass door hanging invitingly ajar, and text written in a prettily angular script on the translucent window that forms a part of the facade, and he only has to step in to be caught in the serene atmosphere of baked pastry and glazed goods.

One of the tables is occupied by a woman with her silver-gray hair in braids, who seems intent on her laptop; and the only other soul stirring within the store is the man behind the counter.

Pinstriped shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Blond, too, but where Prompto’s own hair is stubbornly bright-golden no matter how he tries to cut it with darker shades -- or louder ones -- he just wears his in gelled spikes that call attention to the brownish ash-hue of the whole thing.

As he watches, the man pulls a pair of glasses out of his shirt pocket and polishes them off on a corner of his black apron, and then he looks up with something like kindness, something like a mild curiosity.

There’s really nothing to do except step up to the register and ask, “Coffee?”

Blink. Blink. “Certainly.” 

“It’s going to be a long day for me,” Prompto says, wondering why he’s confiding this much. “So if you could give me something that’ll set me up for several hours, I would be really really thankful.”

“Something strong, then, if you don’t mind getting it in a very small cup.”

“I keep hearing that the smaller the cup, the stronger the coffee,” Prompto babbles on. “So it’s like I can only have so much of it, otherwise I’ll vibrate out of my own skin?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“So, sugar, then,” he says, and he tries on a less-manic smile. “Sugar to go with fantastically strong coffee. I already left that up to you so -- yeah, sure, I guess you tell me what I’m having for breakfast and I’ll happily pay you for it?”

And then the man behind the counter laughs, softly.

A laugh that pins Prompto to the spot, because it’s low and sweet and graveled, and the man looks like he needs it.

“I will do everything I can to keep from leading you astray.”

“Thanks,” and Prompto pays the amount indicated on the register, and -- why not -- he throws an extra handful of coins into the tip jar. “Maybe you’ll be able to find some place that takes money from -- somewhere else, not here,” he says, after a moment, wincing in apology. “Those were the last coins I had left, from home.”

“No shortage of expatriates here,” the man behind the counter says, and his hands are moving over -- ceramic cups, steel spoons, and things Prompto can only guess at. “And I could hardly judge you or them, seeing as I’m one myself.”

“Yeah,” Prompto says, and then he blinks because on the tray that’s soon presented to him is a small black ceramic cup on an equally small saucer -- and then a croissant that is three times the size of the cup, next to a glass bowl full of something he thinks might be marmalade. “Uh?”

“Coffee. And something to eat with it -- that is what you requested, yes?”

“Why’s there green stuff in the, the jam or jelly or marmalade or whatever that is?”

“Because I make my own, and I like mixing different types of citrus fruit. You asked me to put your breakfast together,” and the man looks like he might sigh.

“I thought limes turned a different color when you boiled them or candied them, that’s all,” Prompto says, and he covers his mouth afterwards, because there’s only one reason why he knows that, and it sort of hurts.

It’s sort of a sour memory.

The man behind the counter blinks. 

Puts the tray down.

Comes out from behind the register and picks the tray up again. “Forgive me, I seem to have touched a nerve. It won’t happen again. Where were you planning to sit?”

“The sidewalk?” Prompto says, and allows himself to break out into a grin. “I was joking. Here’s fine, so you don’t have to be so far away from -- your stuff.”

He can feel the warmth right from the top of his head to the soles of his boots when the man sits down with him at the table that almost butts up against the counter. “It’s early,” the man says. “I don’t mind sitting down for a moment.”

“’Scuse the mess,” Prompto says as he picks up the small cup in his hands and takes a deep breath over the rim.

It’s fantastic, and it sends sparks all over his brain, and he probably would have been happy inhaling the whole thing -- except it’s coffee, it’s meant to be drunk, and so he laughs softly at his own rudeness and blows a couple of quick puffs over it, before taking a cautious sip.

The coffee feels good on his tongue, thick and heavy, rich like syrup, and Prompto thinks he might actually want to cry again: not because he’s stranded in a place he doesn’t know, but because he’s found himself drinking the perfect cup of coffee in a place that feels safe and cozy.

“Give me a moment,” he says, and he doesn’t look up at the man sitting at his table. “Give me a moment to drink a little more and then -- I’ll buy another cup. This is, this is some really good coffee.”

“Grateful for the compliment, but -- you might not be able to sleep tonight if you have any more.”

“Sounds like a good idea anyway. They’re giving me a few days to decompress from moving, and then -- well they don’t plan to chain me to a desk or something like that, but they’ll want me to put the hours in, yeah? Only makes sense, they’re paying me after all. But I don’t want to waste a drop of my free time. I don’t have much of it, and I won’t have much of it. I want to learn everything I can already.”

He drinks that first cup and reaches for his wallet again, to pay for the second -- 

And the man gets up and shakes his head and smiles. “Second one’s on the house. All right? It’s the least that I can do.”

Prompto blinks. “You’re -- thanking me. Is that it? Um, what for?”

“Your company,” the man says, before turning away.

For a long moment Prompto is torn between the real and urgent need to finish his coffee, which is divine and probably shouldn’t be left to go cold, and the need to talk to the man some more.

He settles for the idiot’s middle ground, which is: a sip, and then, “Hey.”

“Yes?” 

“Least you could do is tell me your name, if you’re thanking me,” he says, and he ends that by laughing at himself. “I’m a wreck, sorry, it’s too early in the morning for this, never mind.”

“Perhaps you feel you are a wreck, but I do not happen to share that opinion,” the man says, and he, too, is laughing softly. “My name is Ignis. And now I will ask you for yours.”

“I -- didn’t tell you mine, shit, oh god,” Prompto says, and he laughs and laughs and laughs, muffling it in his own hands and his own collars, helpless and happy. “I -- I’m Prompto, god, sorry, what am I doing?”

“Making my morning very enjoyable,” Ignis says, and he doesn’t even sound mocking, and that’s not fair, and he brings two more cups to the table: the small one for Prompto’s second order, and a normal-sized one for, apparently, himself, since he drinks from it as he sits down again. 

“Good coffee,” Prompto says, again, and then he carefully tears into the croissant, which melts into crumbs and flakes on his tongue and he shivers and smiles at the contrast of it, sharp fragrant marmalade and rich butter, and he really tries to make this one last with small bites, he really does.

When breakfast is no more than a pleasant memory, when it’s no more than warmth settling somewhere beneath his heart, he says, “Thanks so much for this -- for all of this. You’re not here to welcome me to this city, to this place, but I feel very happy about this thing you’ve done anyway, and -- I’ll be back, I guess, until you get tired of me and start kicking me out of this place.”

“Only if you’re a churl, and I don’t see that in you,” Ignis says, before holding out his hand. “Please do come by again. I tend to stay open until after midnight.”

“You’re not hurting for regulars, are you?” Prompto asks as he shakes hands.

He can feel the burn-scars on Ignis’s fingers; he can see similar marks on his arm.

“Not at all. But -- your presence can’t hurt, can it?”

He feels his smile falter, a little. 

Maybe not a little, if Ignis frowns back. “I’ve done it again.”

“Not your fault,” Prompto makes himself say.

Weirdly, it’s easy.

Weirdly, he’s still able to smile and wave goodbye, and step out into a clearly developing morning, winter-gray though it might be, with the promise of the same cool sunlight pooling on the sidewalks.

Weirdly, it hurts only a little, when he rubs his hand over his heart.


	3. Chapter 3

He starts running again in the cold and sunny mornings, and running on the cobblestones is a strange kind of experience, and he adjusts his stride and the way he breathes over several sessions, and it’s sort of not a surprise, when he notches a personal record time after five weeks of not-quite-training.

“Maybe I should think about running a marathon,” he says, the morning after.

Ignis blinks: once, twice. “I had thought you were already in training to do that. You seemed -- determined, when you started running again.”

“Did I? I wanted to, I’ve wanted to, for a year or so now. But I was training with someone, back there, back where I was. I nearly said back home, shit, that’s not home any more. And they were making slow progress. Not anyone’s fault, I think. Not mine. He had smoker’s cough. He didn’t smoke. Just hung out with people who did and he got sick. So he did need to exercise, but he had to go really, really slowly. Slower than glaciers on the move maybe.”

“That is unfortunate. Did he not tell you to go on at your own pace?”

“He did. But I didn’t want to leave him behind?” He shrugs and pours more milk into his bowl of granola. “I didn’t want him to feel I was trying to leave him behind.”

Ignis passes him a glass bowl half-filled with pistachios and slivered almonds, a stray walnut or two. “He could have encouraged you another way.”

He shrugs. “He didn’t.”

“I suppose he didn’t. Forgive me, I didn’t mean to pry.”

“I know why you’re curious -- I mean, you can probably tell I’m trying to talk around a lot of things.”

Ignis flashes him a wince. “I can hear it quite clearly, yes.”

“Not ready to talk about the whole story. Don’t know when I’ll be ready,” he says, and winces, too. “Sorry?”

“No, don’t do that. You don’t apologize for that.”

And Prompto reaches out a hand, stops well above and well short of Ignis’s arm where it rests on the table. “Thanks.”

For a moment, Ignis raises his arm to close the distance: and Prompto holds him, just for a moment.

He’s grateful he can turn back to his food and finish his coffee, before he needs to get on with his day.

He’s grateful for that moment, and the warmth of Ignis that lingers on his fingertips.


	4. Chapter 4

December arrives in a shock of single-digit temperatures, and Prompto takes one look at the delicate spiderwebbing of frost that his breath leaves on the windows next to his bed, and falls back into the pillows to muffle a scream.

It doesn’t help that Ignis blinks at him, seemingly taken aback, when he enters the coffee shop late in the morning, as the breakfast rush tapers off.

“Not working,” he says, little caring that he sounds like a sulky schoolkid. “Can’t brain right now. I called in sick.”

“Ah.”

Prompto sits in the back corner of the coffee shop and toys with his hot chocolate, and listens to several people order soup and sandwiches to take away with them, and -- he doesn’t feel hungry, is the problem, which is not helping him with his problem of the shivers.

Three layers of shirts and his puffy vest are not helping him.

He drops a generous tip, with the right coins this time, when he leaves, still having said nothing else.

Collars up to try to fight the breeze that burns his ears; his squashy hat’s next to his bed, unraveling into a useless tangle of yarn, and he thinks that if he cries his tears will probably freeze, too, and that just leaves him feeling numb and blank.

He doesn’t hear the voice calling out to him, not until he’s stepping into one of the trams several blocks away from home and from the coffee place, and surprise ripples in murmurs from the other passengers when a tall black-clad shape pushes right through the doors before they can clang shut.

A tall black-clad shape that resolves into Ignis.

Who steps to his side and musters up a very small, very we-are-in-public smile. “Fancy catching you here.”

“I -- yeah,” Prompto says, or tries to, since his teeth are chattering together, as much from the cold as from the sheer shock of seeing him there. 

“Come with me?”

“Wanted to go to the beach,” he says, and he doesn’t know he’s leaning towards Ignis until he actually makes contact: his shoulder against Ignis’s arm.

And he pulls away, but doesn’t get very far, because Ignis is stepping closer, so now they’re touching from shoulders to hips.

He’s very, very warm, and it’s his tweed coat and it’s his name and Prompto does not, does not dissolve into quiet hysterical giggles, which he is not muffling in his chapped hands.

“We’ll go there, too. But first.”

And Prompto follows Ignis off the tram and into the oldest quarter of the city, and he extracts his smartphone from his pocket to take a few shaky shots of the old buildings bowed and bent beneath the cold air. Girls in elaborate fur hats. An odd multitude of cats, sleek and content for the most part where they lounge in the doorways of various establishments. 

Into the sharp zigzags of a brick-lined alley, to emerge into a courtyard and a silent dry fountain with its lonely sentry of a stone mermaid, and shuttered windows all around.

“Where -- ?” he asks, and the word curls into a sullen lingering puff of air.

“Almost there.”

A door, opening, and a glimpse of a girl in a black jumpsuit trimmed with different patterns of lace, and the sudden overwhelming warmth of a sitting room. Tall-backed armchairs in various plaids, and he takes one next to a softly clanking radiator. Spools of thread are scattered on several tabletops, and several pairs of scissors -- large ones and small ones, and ones shaped like birds.

Ignis is at the back of the room, talking to the girl.

Prompto just tries to shake some warmth back into his leaden hands and feet.

“I’m Iris,” the girl says, when she drops into the chair next to his. “Are there any colors you don’t like?”

He blinks, and blinks, and shakes his head after a long moment. “I -- I just think of colors in terms of taking pictures, not really in terms of wearing them?”

When she directs her sunny smile at him, he can’t help but smile back.

“There. Better,” she says, and claps her hands together, once. “Stand up for me please? Just takes a moment.”

He does, and she smiles some more. “Okay. Thanks. You can sit down again, and I’ll bring you something.”

“Something like what?” he asks, but she’s already moving away, and there’s no one to answer the question, not even Ignis.

So Prompto sits, and he’s so warm, and he closes his eyes.

Only to wake up with most of a violent start, even with the hand that feels familiar where it’s wrapped gently around his arm -- only Ignis’s quick movement as he straightens up once again to his full height saves him from a knock on the head, courtesy of Prompto’s own skull.

“Sorry -- ” Prompto begins, looking up, and he shivers with more than just the cold.

“You okay?” Iris reappears with a heap of material in an arresting bright copper, with the seams picked out in black. “Try this on.”

“What do you mean, _this_?”

But he stands and takes the material from her and it unfolds from his hands into a coat: wide collar, deep pockets, single row of oversized black buttons running down the front. It’s heavy, in a way that feels right, feels well-made.

“I thought that would work fine, with your coloring,” Ignis offers, very quietly. “Something to help you stand out in a crowd.”

“You picked this out? For me?”

And Prompto takes off the puffy vest; he shrugs into the coat and -- maybe it’s just a little too wide in the shoulders, but it falls perfectly to his wrists and to his knees and he sighs as he recognizes the tweed lining, almost but not quite the same as in Ignis’s own outerwear. 

He takes a long look at himself in the mirror that Iris helpfully pushes forward -- and nods. “I trust his eye -- I’ll take it,” he says.

“Great,” Iris says. “It looks really nice on you, too.”

She throws in a plain black watch cap and he gratefully puts it on, pulls it down to cover his ears, and the puffy vest goes into the paper bag she hands him, and he follows Ignis out the door.

“Why?” he asks.

His voice echoes quietly from the stones of the courtyard.

“You needed one, didn’t you? I distinctly remember recommending several places to you, including Iris’s atelier.”

“I meant,” and he closes his mouth, and tries again. “Ignis. You closed your shop to buy me a coat. Why?”

“I am concerned for you.”

He’s not expecting that.

Just a matter-of-fact statement.

He stops dead next to the fountain.

Ignis’s back, receding, tall and austere, moving away from him.

He shouts, then: “Wait!”

Courtyard-echoes rise around him in all their whispers.

Ignis stops, and doesn’t turn back, and -- 

Prompto runs to him.

Takes one unresisting hand. 

“I don’t know what it all means,” he says. 

“So allow me to explain myself,” Ignis says. “It won’t take long, I’d say: because it’s as simple as this, that I’m attracted to you.” Elegant movement of his other shoulder, rising and falling in something like a shrug. “We met in such an unusual way, and my heart was already going out to you to begin with, because you did look like you’d come so terribly unmoored, and so unexpectedly -- but you laughed, when you realized you’d made a fool of yourself -- you laughed at yourself and I had to laugh, but not at you. I laughed because I enjoyed the sound of you.

“You are -- bright, and you are strange. And you would only be the first to say, there’s nothing new about that. Reluctantly, I must concur: bright is not unique. Strange is not unique. Blue eyes and blond hair are not unique. But you, as yourself, as the totality of you: you are trying to survive and you are trying to be kind, and you are trying to improve on what you currently have. _That_ to me is unique. You are your own person, is what I am trying to say, and you’re not satisfied with what you have now, and so you are trying to become someone else. Someone better.

“And what’s more, you seem to be able to tolerate my own foolishness. To not mind when I hurt you. I have asked your forgiveness over and over again, when I speak out of turn and you remember dark times. You forgive me. I have driven people away for far less.”

“You? Hurt people?” Prompto blinks. Squeezes the hand he’s still holding. “Yeah, okay, yeah you do. You mean well, and you wind up saying things in the absolute worst way, and -- yeah. I believe it. I believe you.”

“So forgive me if I have developed some emotions for you, when you seem capable of taking all my gaucheries in stride, and forgiving them. I am trying to do better -- and that should not be a guarantee of any kind to you. Thoughtlessness is a fault of mine. I need to deal with it. Without your help, ideally: it’s my own character that needs reforming, after all. Yours is already in progress. I will not ask you to exert yourself on my behalf when you are already laboring for your own heart, for your own spirit.”

Salt on the moaning wind that whistles at the stones and scours them of dust and of drifting sand.

“It’s hard, doing all this alone,” Prompto says, softly. “And it’s what I have to do: I have to do this alone, because I have to get used to doing things for myself again. Do them properly, this time, not as a, what do you call it? Like it’s an emergency patch for the hole the fucking iceberg punched into the fucking _Titanic_.” He winces, and sees Ignis wince as well. “Yeah, that was terrible. But true, right? I don’t want to look after myself only because I have nothing else and no one else, or only because I’ve hit rock bottom and no one’s going to climb in after me. I want to look after myself first and foremost. Then, and then, I want to look after myself even when there’s someone in my life. I know I’m a little old to be learning that lesson. I know I will probably have to learn that lesson several times more before it sticks, because I’m an idiot. But -- but. I’m learning. And I have to do that alone.”

“I will back off,” Ignis says.

“I wasn’t done talking yet.” Prompto nudges him, carefully, until they’re leaning together, side by side in the courtyard. “There. This, this is maybe something we can do. You’re learning things. I’m learning things. It’s just like school, maybe? I’m trying to learn one thing, and you’re trying to learn another, and we can do it side by side, and maybe we need to help each other out from time to time because like I said, this is hard fucking work, you know? It’s nice to know I’ve got someone rooting for me.”

“Yes.”

“But in the end, it’s individual work. No one grades us on our lives except maybe ourselves, if we can even be trusted to grade ourselves. But -- Ignis?”

“Prompto.”

“I’ve looked forward to seeing you in the mornings. Because, not because of the coffee. But you seem like you want to smile when I come in the door, and I haven’t felt like that for a long time -- like I wasn’t a burden on anyone, like I was an improvement on someone’s day.” He laughs, a little. “I sound like I’m contradicting myself already. I don’t expect you to do anything for me. I don’t and I can’t and I won’t. I barely know you, and that’s partly because I’m trying to figure myself out, so that’s taking up all my time. Yeah, that was what you were talking about earlier, I’m aware of that. But it’s still true. It helps me to see you. I like it a lot.”

Ignis, beside him, seems to blow out a soft breath, and fall a little out of his rigid stance. “You do know how to say it in a way that is simple. In a way that makes everything make sense. It helps me to see you.”

“Okay. Are we on the same page?”

“For now,” and Ignis sighs again.

Prompto breathes out, and presses his cheek to Ignis’s arm. “Thank you for the coat.”

“You’re welcome.”

“We need to talk some more?”

“I should think that would be the wisest course of action. At least, now, I may allow myself the hope that you will not turn me away unheard.”

“I’ll try. And you’ll try, too, right?”

“You have my word on that.”

He nods. “Let’s go walk by the sea.”


	5. Chapter 5

He knocks, three times, and sways on the balls of his feet between each knock, because he’s all bundled up in his coat and his half-assed suit, and the winter winds seem determined to slice through him and cut him into shivering shaking mincemeat.

“We’re closed,” is the answer, muffled by curtains and the glass of the door.

“Ignis,” Prompto says, around an exhausted sniffle.

The door doesn’t exactly fly open: it just comes close to it.

Ignis in the doorway, framed by the last few lights still left on in the shop.

“Nice hair,” Prompto says, not unkindly, and he reaches out to one fallen spiked lock, and doesn’t make contact.

“I -- it’s been a long day. Forgive me, Prompto, I won’t be too polished company now.”

“What makes you think _I_ am?” Prompto says, and he pulls his hand back, and it takes all his concentration to walk through the door and get through the shadows, the looming outlines of the tables and the chairs stacked on top of those tables. “I didn’t want to drink that much, so I ran off. Kind of think that’s being an ass, running away from a holiday party, if the holiday party is at the boss’s house.”

Ignis clicks the locks shut on the little metal box that’s still on the counter. “Do I remember it correctly? Your boss lives clear across the city. You may have told me that. Yes?”

“I did. He’s cool, I don’t have any complaints about him at all. I like him, actually. He’s a nice guy, but some of the people who work for him are weird, and not weird like I might like them weird. Weird like I probably need to stay away from them weird. And I don’t know them at all. What am I saying?”

“You’re still making sense to me,” is Ignis’s reply. “Which is worrying, because you sound like you might be inebriated, and you’re still making sense. I -- I am not sober either.”

“Oh fun,” Prompto says, and he steadies himself on one of the plush armchairs in the back of the shop.

The world, which is this coffee place, is spinning crazily around him.

“How did you get here?”

“Overpaid the fucking cab driver,” he thinks he says.

And there’s a hand wrapping around his. “Trust me,” but the words, which do not come from his mouth, are more of a question.

“Yeah,” he says, and he hopes he said it steady and sure.

That hand is the only real point in the world that exists outside himself, and it leads him up a set of stairs, down a short corridor and past a narrow alley of a kitchen, and then: there’s a room of warm brick walls, soft sheer curtains, a single shrouded lamp, and a bed.

The bed’s laid right on the floor, atop a raft of woven rugs -- but it’s big and soft and it smells like sea-salt, like sugared citron peel, like paperback books.

That hand guides him down to the bed, to the pillows atop it, and all he can do is peel off his coat and a few parts of his suit, and somehow his boots are gone and he’s wrapped and warm and safe.

Soft breathing from nearby, pulling him under -- 

And he sleeps until he’s suddenly awake, jolted out of the dream of a familiar face, old scars broken open and bleeding afresh, red-stained lines contorted in rage, and Prompto doesn’t say that name out loud but he does fly awake, hands pressed to his trembling mouth -- 

Rustling, and then: “Prompto.”

And the Ignis who moves to sit with him, facing him -- where had he been? where had he come from? -- is also wide awake. 

He looks afraid. 

He looks helpless, even in the soft lamp-light.

It’s not a good look on him.

“Don’t, don’t say it,” Prompto says, and he bows his head, falls partway forward -- he doesn’t collapse to the sheets, but only because his forehead lands against Ignis’s shoulder -- he breathes and breathes and slowly the dream recedes, slowly the smell of blood wisps away, and he’s cold and shaking and thirsty and it’s just like that first night, pain tasting like ashes and salt heavy on his tongue.

“It’s going to be all right.”

“I, I just need to catch my breath, and I’ll believe you, I promise,” he hears himself say, nowhere near steady. “I -- it was just a dream. And I drank too much. I had to deal with too many people. Ignis? I’m so tired. So fucking tired. I can’t even think any more. I went home because I wanted to escape. I don’t hate the people at the party. I just ran out of fucks to give tonight. I can’t find anything else to give them, I don’t have anything else to give them. So I left. But here I am asking you to give a fuck about me, and -- you also said you weren’t okay -- ”

Water, cool, at his lips.

He sips, and looks at Ignis, who is shaking his head gently. “I didn’t say I wasn’t all right. What I said was, I’m not sober. My friend who’s the silent partner in the shop -- she came by, and brought champagne, and we finished the bottle. That’s all. She did not even stay to eat; she had to hurry on to some other engagement.”

“So you were happy. Or you were okay. And I’m still here and I kicked you out of your own bed. Sorry, sorry, I -- should I go?”

“You’re not asking me,” Ignis says, softly. “That question isn’t for me. Is it?”

“ -- Yeah. It’s -- I’m trying to run away from you. You know that thing where I want to be too close and also -- I shouldn’t be? I feel like that around you.” He feels the laugh heave out of him, despairing. “What would you rather I do?”

“I already said it: trust me?”

This time he hears it as a clear question.

He looks up.

“I just said -- something that didn’t that sound that good. You should be pushing me away. Why are you asking me to trust you?”

Ignis smiles: only a quirk of his mouth, but it’s a smile. Maybe. It’s gone too soon. “Because I’m going to tell you: stay. You’re not an imposition. I’d be happy to help you, if you need any help. Any reassurance you’re willing to hear from me, I’ll give you.”

Reassurance.

“What,” Prompto says, and he pushes away and falls back into the pillows.

“Well, that’s a start.”

And this time he feels Ignis stretch out on the bed next to him. He is solid and warm; he’s the actual weight of physical presence and quiet voice, and Prompto takes his hand, and holds on.

“It’s all right to be tired,” Ignis says, after a long time, and his fingers are so warm. “We all tire. Perpetual motion is a pipe dream and an impossibility. You run, don’t you? And you tire after you run, so you care for yourself without hating the reality of being tired. It’s the same, I would say, for your mind: it runs and runs, and when it runs down, you should care for it, without making yourself suffer. Students,” he says, and Prompto feels the gentle squeeze of his hand. “Those who are in school. Students tire, because they work so hard, because they root for each other. So they must look after themselves.”

“You’re using my words against me,” Prompto says, and he exhales. 

Smiles a little.

No one to see it, he thinks, but he does it.

He thinks Ignis might be smiling, too, with the lightness of the next thing he says. “Buy your coworkers a round or two, if you feel you have to make it up to them. Or bring your boss a host gift. But it was a social function outside the office. Perhaps you may not need to feel so guilty about leaving early. What were they going to do? Force you to be sociable?”

“They did that in -- the other places I’ve been,” he says.

“Well I won’t stand for it. Please put it out of your mind.”

“If I need a little help with that, what would you suggest?”

Soft hum: the sound of Ignis in thought. “If the question were put to me: I would read. Bake some bread. If you were sober: you would run, is my first guess. Or run, but with your camera. Aside from that I’m afraid I have no ideas.”

“That’s because I never told you what else I did in my spare time,” Prompto says, and he laughs, small and bitter and embarrassed. 

“Which you are under no obligation to talk about now, either.”

“Nothing else to do unless, unless you let me kiss you. Or unless I let you kiss me.”

Hitch, loud, in Ignis’s breath. 

“Yeah, I went too far and I don’t know where that came from, sorry. To be fair, you already know I was -- I was having feelings,” Prompto mutters, and he rolls onto his side, away from Ignis, curling himself up small and miserable, away from the light.

Weight against his back, solid and warm and real, and the shape of Ignis pressed against him: it’s his turn to hitch in his breath. 

Not fear, not denial -- just the pure sparking flare of something being set right in the world, that fizzes in his skin.

“Tell me to back off,” Ignis says, so close, still in that soft voice of his, still with those steady strong undercurrents in him. “Tell me to let go, Prompto, and I’ll let go and you can run. Tell me and I will.”

“Ignis?” he says.

“Prompto.”

“ _Don’t let go._ Please?”

Pause.

Rustling in the sheets and Prompto is being moved, a little, and when he comes to a stop again Ignis’s arms are wrapped around him, anchoring him around his shoulders and waist.

“Sleep, if you can: and if you can’t, I’m here,” he hears Ignis say.

“Not what I want,” Prompto says, and gathers his courage. “I don’t know why I said I wanted to kiss you: but I do want to kiss you.”

Those arms around him tighten -- but only for a breath.

And there’s a soft pressure against the back of his head, that lingers for just a moment. 

Small answer: “I just kissed you, so -- ”

He turns around, carefully, and Ignis’s eyes are bright. 

“Yeah?” Prompto asks.

“Yes.”

And he reaches out to the shadows shrouding Ignis’s face and all its sharp angles, all its subtle scars, all its dark spots scattered at random. Time has softened the pitting left by, probably, chicken pox, or something of that sort: and time has worn grooves in his temples and at the bridge of his nose, in the shapes of the frame of his ever-present eyeglasses.

Which are not on his face right now, so Prompto can really appreciate the green of his irises, the length of his eyelashes, the faded pale line of scarring catching at one eyebrow.

He cranes closer, closer, gently, and closes the distance with his eyes wide open, and Ignis’s lips are cool and chapped and taste like champagne and sugar-glaze.

He shivers, and kisses him again, when those eyes flutter shut.

Somewhere in those soft kisses he gives in to the temptation to lick at the corner of Ignis’s mouth and -- and someone gasps, or perhaps it’s both of them, and suddenly he’s flat on his back and wide-eyed as Ignis looms over him, and he’s not afraid at all.

He says it out loud: “Not scared of you.”

“For now,” Ignis agrees, breathless and quiet. 

“What is it you’re hiding,” Prompto asks, though he really wants to get back to the kissing.

“Nothing. Too many things. But maybe not now. Right now I don’t want to hide from you.”

He feels the smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “Kiss me,” he says, only partly a question.

Ignis’s hands are warm, so warm, gently cupped around his cheeks, like he’s holding something precious -- like _Prompto_ is something precious to him -- and it’s all Prompto can do not to choke on the tears and it’s a strange kind of relief when the first kiss comes, when it falls onto his mouth, and that fall is sweet and it drags him down, till he’s lost and aching and he feels like he might burst into flames at any second: because Ignis kisses him with teeth and with tongue, and he growls and arches up and gives it back just as fervently.

He surfaces and immediately cries out again, as Ignis trails hot soft kisses to his ear -- then nips, sharply. “Ah fuck, Ignis!”

“Tell me to stop -- ”

“Stop saying that!”

He sits up, suddenly, and Ignis isn’t as graceful, not this time, when he rises as well: and Prompto has to grab him by both shoulders to steady him, and that helps and that really doesn’t help, because now Ignis is sitting right over his knees, and even in the scant light of the room he thinks he can see those blown-open pupils, and he thinks they might be -- 

Might be for him. Might be because of him.

“Ignis,” he says, and he’s pleased to hear the breathless rasp in the word, pleased to hear the hitch in his own breath. “I get being careful. I get the consent thing. It’s sexy as hell, when it comes from you: so maybe you want me to say it clearly? As clearly as I can manage it right now anyway. And then don’t, you don’t need to ask me again until I take it back -- ”

Blink, blink.

And suddenly, Prompto knows what to say.

“I trust you. Wherever this goes -- I’ll be right here. And you’ll be right here. Yeah?

“And I trust you to stop if I say so.”

Not an answer in words, not this time.

Prompto finds his hands being guided to the hem of Ignis’s sweater, and so -- he smiles, and slides his fingertips against warm skin, tracing Ignis’s waist, and around to the small of Ignis’s back.

Up, up, layers of clothes a heavy weight against his wrists, and he stops just below Ignis’s shoulders, turns his hands and grabs everything, pulls it all gently away, and Ignis emerges from his shirt and his sweater with his hair in ruffles and loose waves, and Prompto laughs, and pulls him in close for a smile and a kiss. “You’ve seen me with worse bed head.”

“So I have,” is the answer, and Ignis smiles back, and his fingers move to work on Prompto’s shirt buttons, careful and methodical: he’s glad he thought to lose things like his belt and his socks and his waistcoat earlier, and he’s really glad that he’d never worn a tie to the party in the first place. 

He goes farther than Ignis has, however, and after he’s lost his shirt he shifts around and shimmies out of his trousers and his boxers as well, and so: he’s never going to be completely at ease with the odd angles of his own body, with the way he’s so skinny in some places and feathered with stretch marks in others, with the muscles of his thighs and his calves that don’t seem to fit into any sort of proportion with the rest of him, but now that this has happened, he can look Ignis right in the eyes, because it’s him. His own body, and the history that his life has written into every inch of it.

And it’s only after he looks up that Ignis sheds the rest of his own clothes.

Prompto looks.

Massive burn-scar that darkens Ignis’s left side, trailing lines of ropy shiny skin across his stomach and his chest. 

No, that’s not what catches Prompto’s attention; what he sees is the lines of him, just a little soft around the middle. The marks on his body that continue on from those that had been in his face. The little imperfections of him, that Prompto thinks might be something they have in common.

Prompto sighs, and tugs on Ignis’s wrists, pulls him back into his lap: not for a kiss but to embrace him. To hold him.

All this time, when they’ve been sort of touching: hands and arms and leaning together, and he’d always, always absently wondered what it would be like to actually have him right here where he is, arms winding around his waist, and Prompto runs his fingers through the hair falling over the back of Ignis’s neck and holds him, just a little more tightly.

Long soft sigh just below his ear.

“You’re shaking,” he hears Ignis whisper.

“So are you,” he whispers back.

And with that last admission out of the way, he can brush his hand over Ignis’s jaw, and turn his head, and kiss him. He can shift their bodies closer together, drive his hips upwards to feel the breathless bright laugh that falls from Ignis’s mouth, press kisses against Ignis’s cheek and eye and temple.

He doesn’t think he needs to hurry, not when he feels drunk all over again, the good kind of drunk this time, as he kisses Ignis over and over again and gets even more light-headed with each one -- but then, Prompto’s only human, and Ignis is beautiful, and -- so he finds himself leaning heavily into Ignis as he runs the back of his hand down that lean chest -- over lines of scar tissue -- down, down, and he looks up.

He gets permission in those blown-wide pupils, and the quiet moaned “Yes” that falls from Ignis’s mouth.

And he takes Ignis firmly in hand -- sure and steady grip.

Prompto forgets things like shame and fear and the cold of the room itself, as Ignis rocks helplessly into his touch, as Ignis shakes himself apart, coming with a soft choked-off word that almost, almost sounds like Prompto’s own name.

It’s not fair, a little, how quickly Ignis seems to recover from that: but when he returns the favor Prompto can’t care, can’t care, he’s too busy trying to call out Ignis’s name -- and Ignis shatters him far, far too soon, even when he grits his teeth and tries to fight it and fight him -- and Prompto feels exactly zero regrets about it.

After: he’s wide awake and sort-of cleaned up, and lying on his side to face Ignis, and says, “How many days has it been, you think? We talk in the mornings, and sometimes we maybe skate close to the edges, the broken places, and -- we don’t, we don’t talk at all, do we? In the mornings?”

Quiet sharp chuckle. “No, I suppose you’re right. Just -- missing all the cues, and being kindly idiots. Yes.”

“So we need to talk.”

“We do.” 

“What do you do around the new year anyway?”

Ignis looks cute when he’s surprised, with that moue and the widening of his eyes. “I -- close for the year on the thirtieth, and then it’s business as usual on the first -- you’d be surprised, the number of people looking for coffee on New Year’s Day -- ”

“I’m not surprised. I’ve done that too,” Prompto says. “You know they’re kicking us all out of the office for the last ten days of the year? I’ll go back to work on the second. That’s too much free time for me. I can’t run for an entire week and change.”

“I’m sure I can put you to work in the coffee shop.”

“Nooo,” and he laughs, especially when Ignis smiles, and he kisses Ignis’s forehead and lets him scoot closer. 

But this way, he doesn’t have to be looking at him when he clears his throat and says, “Want to -- stay with me? For the thirty-first? Can’t promise good food and things like that. I have a view of the sea though. And you can sit on the window sill, somewhat. I -- I volunteer cuddles. I don’t know what else to offer you.”

“I’d like that.”

“We do things all out of order,” Prompto laughs, just as he thinks he might finally be falling asleep, just as he thinks his mind might finally be spinning carefully down into rest.

“It works, doesn’t it.”

And Ignis looks up with such a warm smile, like home. 

Like far-off surf, soughing beneath sunlight.

Like safety, the small and tentative flutters of it. 

Prompto kisses him, and whispers, “It does.”

“Good night, Prompto.”

“Good night, Ignis.”

**Author's Note:**

> ninemoons42 on Tumblr: [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)


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